Reinventing art through ecology.

1. February 14 Tuesday

Planning Introduction: Terms and ideas, multidisciplinary science, new technology, new perceptions of expressivity... Bibliography, the wiki as a creative notebook for making things. Your media, and working with field recordings. Overview of sessions #2-6, structure of the course, assignments. Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts.

The Session U2:316

Themes: randomness and structure, bones nature taxidermy, anatomies and structures, collections of found objects, walking, sleeping, water!, dark ecology, music and the self-sustainable studio, working out ecological conditions, ending with the 3 ecologies

References

Félix Guattari: The Three Ecologies (1989)

Philip Ball: The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature (1999), also available as Flow, Shapes, Branches. Also: Life's Matrix: A Biography of Water

Keller & Golley: The Philosophy of Ecology

Dark ecology: Timothy Morton: Ecology Without Nature, see also the Dutch project, inspired by Morton, with the same name: http://www.darkecology.net/

About water, see a project by City Mined: Pacco Test

Robert Smithson

Participants

GivanBela

radim

terezie

Petr Nápravník

AnnaT

Marketa Wagnerova

VojtaV

2. March 21 Tuesday

Introduction, and some ideas:
A little history of ecology and environmentalism till today.
Interwoven with A little ecological history of 20th century art till today.

EcologyTerminology

Why bring in media?

Let's discuss ecotechnology, ecology and ecology, ISEA 2012.

Collaborative writing, several different types:

The history of hypertext

HTML/HTTP and today (javascript, xml, html5, etc...)

wikiwiki and this dokuwiki: intro and syntax

piratepad

git or github

Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts.

3. March 28 Tuesday

Ah let's go field recording. I can be at FAVU around 3pm. Please bring your favorite, borrowed or stolen recording gear. there are 2 things you should tell me in advance: fill out in your page above the theme you want us to record, and what is it that you will be recording with? If there is still time we can edit the files and get to know some techniques for working with sound files.

In between we can still talk about:
The world as it stands today: culture, economy, industry, art and science.
Fablabs, Maker spaces, and other DIY things in the world.

Let's discuss documenta 14
Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts.

4. April 4 Tuesday

Networks. New music: sound art, radio art, installations, performances.
What is music, composition, media, etc today?
Making your own eco-lab: sonification.
Let's do some field recordings, edit them, do something with it.
Maybe we can link our files here below, thematically, with a title “name-YYMMDD-theme” and give it a one-line description, like “birds dogs people sun nowind citypark etc..”
Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts.

Software: Audacity, multiplatform free open source editor and please try to download and install sonic pi, maybe if you have time go through a couple of tutorials till you feel like you can get some kicking sound out of the thing. Don't worry too much on the other hand, next week more!

5. April 11 Tuesday

The city and the countryside? moving into the real world. From city festivals to remote art spaces. Residencies.

What is live coding and why would we do it? Let's look into sonic pi, and perform with the sounds we recorded over the last weeks. Again we can use Audacity to fine-cut the sound, normalize it, take out ticks and clicks, reduce noise, time stretch it, analyze the spectrum of the sound.

Making your own eco-lab: sensors and what to do with data around you.

How to make art with less energy?

Why low voltage power technology? Why the sun and wind matter?

Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts. By live coding and jamming in Sonic Pi! Next week we try to perform a little with it, but get through the tutorials for now... Btw if you want to access your samples on your hard disk instead of the included ones, you have to indicate the full path to them, like

sample "/home/pi/my-samples/bang.wav" (OSX and Linux) \\
sample 'C:\Users\bla\samples\tiktak.wav' (Windows)

If you are interested in analyses of sound, there is a fabulous scientific program for free: sonic visualiser

Or listen to these pieces: Radio Savvy Commissions for Documenta 14

6. April 18 Tuesday

Wrapping up: overview. What is to come and what to do next? Opening up your own eco-lab to the rest of the world. Discussion, and critique. Share notes and thoughts.